John Hay

For other people named John Hay, see John Hay (disambiguation).

John Hay
37th United States Secretary of State
In office September 30, 1898 – July 1, 1905
President	William McKinley Theodore Roosevelt
Preceded by	William R. Day
Succeeded by	Elihu Root
12th United States Assistant Secretary of State
In office November 1, 1879 – May 3, 1881
Preceded by	Frederick W. Seward
Succeeded by	Robert R. Hitt
Personal details
Born	John Milton Hay (1838-10-08)October 8, 1838 Salem, Indiana, U.S.
Died	July 1, 1905(1905-07-01) (aged 66) Newbury, New Hampshire, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Clara Louise Stone (1849–1914)
Children	Adelbert Barnes Alice Evelyn (Wadsworth) Helen Julia (Whitney) Clarence
Alma mater	Brown University
Profession	Author, Journalist, Statesman, Politician, Secretary
Military service
Allegiance	United States of America Union
Branch/service	United States Army Union Army
Rank	brevet Colonel
Battles/wars	American Civil War

John Milton Hay (October 8, 1838 – July 1, 1905) was an American statesman and official whose career in government stretched over nearly half a century. Beginning as a private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln, Hay's highest office was United States Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Hay was also an author and biographer, and wrote poetry through much of his life.

Early life

Family and youth

John Milton Hay was born in Salem, Indiana on October 8, 1838. He was the third son of Dr. Charles Hay and the former Helen Leonard. John Hay's paternal grandfather, also named John, had emigrated from Berkeley County, Virginia (today in West Virginia) in 1775, settling in Lexington, Kentucky where he had 14 children. Both Charles and his father hated slavery, and separately moved to the North in the early 1830s; the elder John Hay went to Springfield, Illinois, where he became a good friend of local lawyer Abraham Lincoln. Charles, a doctor, practiced in Salem and married there in 1831. Helen's father, David Leonard, had moved his family west from Assonet, Massachusetts in 1818, but died en route to Vincennes, Indiana, and Helen relocated to Salem in 1830 to teach school. Charles was not successful in Salem, and borrowed money to move, with his wife and children, to Warsaw, Illinois in 1841.

In Warsaw, a Southern Illinois town opposite the confluence of the Mississippi and Des Moines rivers, the Hay family lived a difficult pioneer existence. Warsaw, like the other towns in which John Hay spent his childhood, had been settled by New Englanders, and was anti-slavery. It was men of Warsaw who, seeing the rival town of Nauvoo, populated by Mormons, as a threat, formed a militia and, with men from nearby towns, helped lynch Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Charles served as surgeon to the militia. John Hay, then aged five, may have been among the women and children who fled to the other side of the Mississippi out of fear of Mormon revenge (which did not come), and in his later writings took pains to minimize his father's role.

John attended the local schools, and in 1849 his uncle Milton Hay invited the precocious child to live with him in Pittsfield, Pike County, and attend a well-regarded local academy. There, he first met John Nicolay, who was a 20-year-old newspaperman. Milton, a lawyer, was also a friend of Lincoln, who had by then served in Congress. Once John completed his studies there, the 13-year-old was sent to live with his grandfather in Springfield, and attend Illinois State University. This was at the time little more than a high school. Once John's studies were done there, he returned to Warsaw, and his parents and uncle Milton (who financed the boy's education) decided to send him to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, alma mater of his late maternal grandmother.

Student and Lincoln supporter

Hay enrolled at Brown in 1855. Although he enjoyed college life, he did not find it easy: his Western clothing and accent made him stand out and the limited facilities at Illinois State (then little more than a high school) had not adequately prepared him. He missed many days through illness, though how much of that was due to actual physical ailments is uncertain. He had hoped to graduate in two years, but persuaded his parents and uncle to allow him to remain for a third. Nevertheless, he gained a reputation as a star student, and became a part of Providence's literary circle which included Sarah Helen Whitman and Nora Perry. He wrote poetry, and experimented with hashish. He received his Master of Arts degree at graduation in 1858, and was, like his grandfather before him, Class Poet.

Leaving Providence in July 1858, Hay returned to Warsaw, and suffered a period of depression, not knowing what career to undertake. His letters reveal that he felt out of place in the West, but according to Howard Kushner and Anne Sherrill in their biography of Hay, "in the final analysis the thing that rescued young John Hay from despair was the continued support of his family. Although Hay wanted to return to Brown as a graduate student, his family lacked the money, and instead he was made a clerk in Milton Hay's law firm (he had relocated to Springfield) where he could study law and become an attorney.

Milton Hay's firm included Stephen Logan, Lincoln's former partner, and Lincoln maintained offices next door. Although a national figure due to his debates with Senator Stephen Douglas, Lincoln remained a practicing attorney, and in at least one case was co-counsel with Logan and Milton Hay. According to John Hay's biographer, William Roscoe Thayer, "it could not have been long before he, like every one [sic] else, was listening to Lincoln's stories and feeling the indefinable fascination of his homely wit and moral fervor".

Another connection between Lincoln and Hay came through Nicolay, who had moved to Springfield in 1856, printed campaign literature for Lincoln, and was admitted to the bar in 1859 after studying law under one of Lincoln's close friends, Ozias Hatch. But Hay did not support Lincoln for president until after the former congressman's surprising victory at the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago. Hay made speeches and wrote newspaper articles boosting Lincoln's candidacy, and when Nicolay, who had been made Lincoln's private secretary for the campaign, found he needed help with the huge amounts of correspondence, Hay was brought on board.

Lincoln was victorious in the election that November, and Nicolay, who Lincoln had asked to continue as private secretary, is said to have recommended that Hay be hired to assist him at the White House. Lincoln is reported to have said, "We can't take all Illinois with us down to Washington" but then "Well, let Hay come". Kushner and Sherrill were dubious about "the story of Lincoln's offhand appointment of Hay" as fitting well into Hay's self-image of never having been an office-seeker, but "poorly into the realities of Springfield politics of the 1860s"—Hay must have expected some reward for handling Lincoln's correspondence for months. Thayer believed that Lincoln hired Hay to work in the White House, seeing "the fresh, easy-mannered, sunny companion, who might relieve the tedium of routine life". Hay biographer John Taliaferro suggests that Lincoln engaged Nicolay and Hay to assist him, rather than more seasoned men both "out of loyalty and surely because of the competence and compatibility that his two young aides had demonstrated".

American Civil War

Main article: American Civil War

Secretary to Lincoln

John Hay as a young man

Hay was admitted to the bar in Illinois on February 4, 1861, and later told his son Adelbert, "I never practiced law myself, but I have never considered the time wasted I spent studying it." On February 11, he embarked with President-elect Lincoln on a circuitous journey to Washington. By this time, seven Southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America in reaction to the election of Lincoln, an opponent of slavery. When Lincoln was sworn in on March 4, Hay and Nicolay moved into the White House, sharing a shabby room. As there was only authority for payment of one presidential secretary (Nicolay), Hay was appointed to a post in the Interior Department at $1,600 per year ($1,800 beginning in 1862), seconded to service at the White House. In that Executive Mansion, they were available to Lincoln 24 hours a day. Early on, they requested and received permission from Lincoln to write his biography, but work did not begin until 1876 and it was not published until 1890. In April 1861, Hay began a diary which often touched on the personal side of Lincoln—the President's sleepless wanderings at night, his loneliness as he sought means to heal a divided nation: "a major source for understanding Lincoln, the Civil War, and John Hay". Knowing that Lincoln told humorous stories so as to distract himself from the pain of the war, Hay often told Lincoln jokes, but could not lighten the somber mood at the White House for long.

Hay and Nicolay divided their responsibilities, with Nicolay tending to assist Lincoln in his office and in meetings, while Hay dealt with the correspondence, which was very large. Both men tried to shield Lincoln from office-seekers and others who wanted to meet with the President. Hay, with his charm, escaped much of the hard feelings from those denied Lincoln's presence, blame that fell heavily on Nicolay. Hay continued to write, anonymously, for newspapers, sending in columns designed to replacing the image of Lincoln as untried rail-splitter with that of a sorrowful man, religious and competent, giving of his life and health for the purpose of preserving the Union. Similarly, Hay served as "White House propagandist", in his columns explaining away losses such as that at First Manassas in July 1861.

Despite the heavy workload—Hay wrote that he was busy 20 hours a day—he tried to make as normal a life as possible. He took his meals with Nicolay at Willard's Hotel, going to the theatre with Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, and reading Les Misérables in French. Hay, still in his early 20s, spent time both in barrooms, and at cultured get-togethers in the homes of Washington's elite.

According to Thayer, "the person who dominated [Hay] from his first day in the White House was Lincoln". After the death of Lincoln's 11-year-old son Willie in February 1862 (an event not mentioned in Hay's diary or correspondence), "it was Hay who became, if not a surrogate son, then a young man who stirred a higher form of parental nurturing that Lincoln, despite his best intentions, did not successfully bestow on either of his surviving children". According to Hay biographer Robert Gale, "Hay came to adore Lincoln for his goodness, patience, understanding, sense of humor, humility, magnanimity, sense of justice, healthy skepticism, resilience and power, love of the common man, and mystical patriotism".

Hay and Nicolay accompanied Lincoln to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania for the dedication of the cemetery there, where were interred many of those who fell at the Battle of Gettysburg. Although they made much of Lincoln's brief Gettysburg Address in their 1890 multi-volume biography of Lincoln, Hay's diary says only that "the President, in a firm, free way, with more grace than is his wont, said his half-dozen lines of consecration."

Presidential emissary

Lincoln sent Hay away from the White House on various missions. In August 1861, Hay escorted Mary Lincoln and her children to Long Branch, New Jersey, a resort on the Jersey Shore, both as their caretaker and as a means of giving Hay a much-needed break. The following month, Lincoln sent Hay to Missouri to deliver a letter to Union General John C. Frémont, who had irritated the President with military blunders and freeing local slaves without authorization, endangering Lincoln's attempts to keep the border states in the Union.

In April 1863, Lincoln sent Hay to the Union-occupied South Carolina coast to report back on the ironclad vessels being used in an attempt to recapture Charleston Harbor—the war had begun there at Fort Sumter. From there, Hay went on to the Florida coast, marveling at the differences between North and South. He returned to Florida, by then mostly in Union hands, in January 1864, after Lincoln had announced his Ten Percent Plan, that if ten percent of the 1860 electorate in a state took oaths of loyalty and to support emancipation, they could form a government with Federal protection. Some Unionists had went letters to Hay, asking him to run for Congress there, and Lincoln considered Florida, with its small population, a good test case. Lincoln commissioned Hay a major{{efn|Hay was brevetted lieutenant colonel and colonel in May 1865. See Gale, p. 18 and sent him to Florida. Opposition newspapers accused Lincoln of seeking three loyal delegates to the next Republican convention and Hay's election to Congress. Hay spent a month there in February and March 1864 but Union defeats there reduced the area under federal control. Believing his mission impractical, he sailed back to Washington.

In July 1864, New York publisher Horace Greeley sent word to Lincoln that there were Southern peace emissaries in Canada. Lincoln doubted that they actually spoke for Confederate President Jefferson Davis, but had Hay journey to New York to persuade the publisher to go to Niagara Falls, Ontario to meet with the Southerners and bring them to Washington with their safety guaranteed. Greeley reported to Lincoln that the emissaries lacked any accreditation by Davis, but were confident they could bring both sides together. Lincoln sent Hay to Ontario with what became known as the Niagara Manifesto: that if the South laid down its arms, freed the slaves, and reentered the Union, they could expect liberal terms on other points. The Southerners refused to come to Washington under such terms. Although Lincoln had doubted from the start that the men had any authority from Davis, he could not allow the opportunity to make peace pass without suffering politically in a war-weary nation.

Hay's diary and writings during the Civil War are basic historical sources. Some have credited him with being the real author of Lincoln's Letter to Mrs. Bixby, consoling her for the loss of her sons in the war. Hay was present when Lincoln died after being shot at Ford's Theatre. Hay and Nicolay wrote a formal 10-volume biography of Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln: A History, 1890) and prepared an edition of his collected works.

Diplomatic career

Between 1865 and 1870, he was secretary of legation at Paris (1865–7) and Madrid (1867–8), and chargé d'affaires at Vienna (1868–70). In 1878 he became assistant secretary of state in the Hayes administration. Hay was named U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1897 when William McKinley became President. Some of the recognition of the longstanding community of interests between the United Kingdom and the United States was the result of Hay's diplomatic tenure.

Journalism career

In 1870 he left government and worked for 6 years as an editor for the New York Tribune under Whitelaw Reid.

Secretary of State

In August 1898, Hay was named by President McKinley as Secretary of State and helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris of 1898, which ended the Spanish–American War. He was involved in the Perdicaris incident.

Hay continued serving as Secretary of State after Theodore Roosevelt succeeded McKinley, serving until his own death in 1905. He established the Open Door Policy in China.

Legacy

His contributions included the adoption of an Open Door Policy in China (announced on January 2, 1900) and the preparations for the Panama Canal. He negotiated the Hay–Pauncefote Treaty (1901), the Hay–Herrán Treaty (1903), and the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty (1903), all of which were instrumental in clearing the way for the construction and use of the Canal. In all, he brought about more than 50 treaties, including the settlement of the Samoan dispute, as a result of which the United States secured Tutuila, with a harbor in the Pacific; a definitive Alaskan boundary treaty in 1903; the negotiation of reciprocity treaties with Argentina, France, Germany, Cuba, and the British West Indies; the negotiation of new treaties with Spain; and the negotiation of a treaty with Denmark for the cession of the Danish West India Islands.

Hay in portrait by John Singer Sargent

In 1904, Hay was one of the first seven chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Hay is also known for his comment, written in a letter to President Theodore Roosevelt, describing the Spanish–American War as a "splendid little war".

Hay appears as a prominent character in Gore Vidal's historical novels Lincoln and Empire and in William Safire's historical novel Freedom. He appears, portrayed by John Huston, in the 1975 film The Wind and the Lion, a fictionalization of the Perdicaris Affair in Morocco in 1904. Steven Culp portrayed John ("Johnny") Hay in the 1988 miniseries Lincoln, based on Vidal's book. He is portrayed in the 1997 miniseries Rough Riders by actor and retired United States Marine R. Lee Ermey. In the 2012 motion picture Lincoln he is played by actor Joseph Cross and is seemingly still Lincoln's assistant secretary despite the events of the film taking place entirely in 1865 (Hay held the position until 1864), although his position is never overtly stated.

After Roosevelt signed an executive order setting aside land in the Benguet region of the Philippines for a military reservation under the United States Army, Camp John Hay of Baguio City was established on October 25, 1903 and named in his honor. It was re-designated John Hay Air Base in 1955. The base was used for rest and recreation for U.S. military personnel and the dependants of U.S. military personnel in the Philippines as well as Department of Defense employees and their dependents. The 690-hectare property was finally turned over to the Philippines in 1991 upon the expiration of the Philippine-U.S. Bases Agreement. Since 1997 it has been in the hands of a private developer, on a long-term lease, which has transformed the property into a world class resort.

The mountain resort still carries John Hay's name to this day.

Hay was a close friend of Henry Brooks Adams, American historian and author. In 1884, architect Henry Hobson Richardson designed adjoining townhouses for Hay and Adams on Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. The houses were demolished in 1927 and the site is now occupied by the Hay–Adams Hotel.

Posthumous bust of John Hay (1915–17), by J. Massey Rhind, inside the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial.

Brown University's John Hay Library housed the entire library collection from its construction in 1910 until the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library was built in 1964. In 1971, when physical science materials were transferred to the new Sciences Library, the John Hay Library became exclusively a repository for the library's Special Collections.

Hay's New Hampshire estate has been conserved as part of the John Hay National Wildlife Refuge, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests' John Hay Land Studies Center, and The Garden Conservancy's Fells Reservation. The Fells, a local nonprofit organization that has maintained and managed the John Hay Estate on Lake Sunapee for over a decade, acquired the northern half of the property from the US Fish and Wildlife Service on March 25, 2008.

Hay and Abraham Lincoln are depicted in a larger-than-life bronze sculpture by Mark Martino, entitled A Learning Moment, in the Sesquicentennial Plaza at Carthage College. Hay was an alumnus of the Illinois State University in Springfield (previously Hillsboro College), which later became Carthage College when it moved to Carthage, Illinois in 1870.

Hay was a correspondent member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1900 until his death.

He received honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from: Case Western Reserve University (1894); Brown University (1897); Princeton University (1901); Dartmouth College (1901); Yale University (1901); and Harvard University (1902).

John Hay High School, built in 1927, is on Cleveland's east side, in the University Circle area.

Personal life

Hay married Clara Stone, daughter of Amasa Stone of Cleveland, Ohio, an American industrialist who built railroads and invested in mills in Ohio. They are buried together in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio. Their daughter Helen Julia Hay, a writer and poet, married Payne Whitney of the influential Whitney family; their children were U.S. ambassador John Hay Whitney and Joan Whitney Payson.

Hay and Hillary Rodham Clinton are the only Secretaries of State to have resided in the White House prior to becoming Secretary of State.

Books by Hay

• Abraham Lincoln: A History (with John G. Nicolay, (10 vol. 1890)
• The Bread-winners (1883), a novel
• Castilian Days (1875)
• Pike County Ballads and Other Poems (1871)
• Poems (1890)

Bibliography

• Gale, Robert L. (1978). John Hay. Twayne's American Authors. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7199-9.
• Kushner, Howard I.; Sherrill, Anne Hummel (1977). John Milton Hay: The Union of Poetry and Politics. Twayne's World Leaders. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7719-9.
• Thayer, William Roscoe (1915). The Life and Letters of John Hay. Vol. I. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
• Taliaferro, John. (2013). All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, From Lincoln to Roosevelt (Kindle ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978–1–4165–9741–4. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
• Thayer, William Roscoe (1915). The Life and Letters of John Hay. Vol. II. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Further reading

• GianPaolo Ferraioli, L'Italia e l'ascesa degli Stati Uniti al rango di potenza mondiale (1896-1909). Diplomazia, dibattito pubblico, emigrazione durante le amministrazioni di William McKinley e Theodore Roosevelt, Napoli, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2013. (in Italian)

• Warren Zimmermann, First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power (New York, 2002)

External links

• Works by John Hay at Project Gutenberg
• John Hay Biography
• John Hay, Abraham Lincoln's friend
• Camp John Hay Resort
• "John Hay". Find a Grave. Retrieved November 1, 2008.
• John Hay Land Studies Center
• John Hay National Wildlife Refuge
• The Fells Reservation

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