Henry L. Stimson

Henry Lewis Stimson
46th United States Secretary of State
In office March 28, 1929 – March 4, 1933
President	Herbert Hoover
Deputy	Joseph P. Cotton (1929-1931) William R. Castle, Jr. (1931-1933)
Preceded by	Frank B. Kellogg
Succeeded by	Cordell Hull
54th United States Secretary of War
In office July 10, 1940 – September 21, 1945
President	Franklin D. Roosevelt (1940-1945) Harry S. Truman (1945)
Deputy	Robert P. Patterson (1940) John J. McCloy (1941-1945)
Preceded by	Harry Hines Woodring
Succeeded by	Robert P. Patterson
45th United States Secretary of War
In office May 22, 1911 – March 4, 1913
President	William Howard Taft
Deputy	Robert Shaw Oliver
Preceded by	Jacob M. Dickinson
Succeeded by	Lindley M. Garrison
8th Governor-General of the Philippines
In office December 27, 1927 – February 23, 1929
Appointed by	Calvin Coolidge
Deputy	Eugene Allen Gilmore
Preceded by	Leonard Wood (acting)
Succeeded by	Eugene Allen Gilmore (acting)
Personal details
Born	(1867-09-21)September 21, 1867 New York City
Died	October 20, 1950(1950-10-20) (aged 83) Long Island, New York
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Mabel White Stimson
Alma mater	Yale College Harvard Law School
Profession	Lawyer, Diplomat, Administrator

Henry L. Stimson

Henry Lewis Stimson (September 21, 1867 – October 20, 1950) was an American statesman, who served as Secretary of War, Governor-General of the Philippines, and Secretary of State. He was a conservative Republican, and a leading lawyer in New York City. He is best known as the civilian Secretary of War during World War II, chosen for his aggressive stance against Nazi Germany, with responsibility for the Army and Air Force. He managed the conscription and training of 12 million soldiers and airmen, the purchase and transportation to battlefields of 30 percent of the nation's industrial output, the building of the atomic bomb and the decision to use it.

During World War II, Edwin O. Reischauer was the Japan expert for the U.S. Army Intelligence Service, in which role he is incorrectly said to have prevented the bombing of Kyoto. In his autobiography, Reischauer specifically refuted the validity of this broadly-accepted claim:

...the only person deserving credit for saving Kyoto from destruction is Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War at the time, who had known and admired Kyoto ever since his honeymoon there several decades earlier.

Career

Born to a wealthy New York family long involved in Republican Party politics, he was educated at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where a dormitory is named and dedicated to him, and at Yale College (BA 1888), where he was elected to Skull and Bones, a secret society that afforded many contacts for the rest of his life. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1890 and joined the prestigious Wall Street law firm of Root and Clark in 1891, becoming a partner two years later. Elihu Root, a future Secretary of War and Secretary of State, became a major influence on and role model for Stimson.

(In 1893 Stimson married Mabel Wellington White, a great-great granddaughter of American founding father Roger Sherman and the sister of Elizabeth Selden Rogers; they had no children.)

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Stimson U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Here he made a distinguished record prosecuting antitrust cases. Stimson was defeated as Republican candidate for Governor of New York in 1910.

Under Taft's and Wilson's administrations

Stimson was appointed Secretary of War in 1911 under President William Howard Taft. He continued the reorganization of the Army begun by Elihu Root, improving its efficiency prior to its vast expansion in World War I. Following the outbreak of war, he was a leader in the American effort to aid the stricken people of Belgium. Theodore Roosevelt selected Stimson as one of eighteen officers (others included: Seth Bullock, Frederick Russell Burnham, and John M. Parker) to raise a volunteer infantry division, Roosevelt's World War I volunteers, for service in France in 1917. The U.S. Congress gave Roosevelt the authority to raise up to four divisions similar to the Rough Riders of 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry Regiment and to the British Army 25th (Frontiersmen) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers; however, as Commander-in-chief, President Woodrow Wilson refused to make use of the volunteers and the unit disbanded. Stimson went on to serve the regular U.S. Army in France as an artillery officer, reaching the rank of Colonel in August 1918.

Under Coolidge's administration

In 1927, Stimson was sent by President Calvin Coolidge to Nicaragua for civil negotiations. Stimson wrote that Nicaraguans "were not fitted for the responsibilities that go with independence and still less fitted for popular self-government". Later, after he'd been appointed Governor-General of the Philippines (succeeding General Leonard Wood), an office he held from 1927 to 1929, he opposed Filipino independence for the same reason.

Under Hoover's administration

From 1929 to 1933 he served as Secretary of State under President Herbert Hoover.

From 1930 to 1931 Stimson was the Chairman of the U.S. delegation to the London Naval Conference. In the following year, he was the Chairman of the U.S. delegation to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. That same year, the United States issued the "Stimson Doctrine" as a result of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria: the United States refused to recognize any situation or treaty that limited U.S. treaty rights or that was brought about by aggression. Returning to private life at the end of Hoover's administration, Stimson was an outspoken advocate of strong opposition to Japanese aggression.

Under FDR's administration

In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt returned Stimson, at the age of 67, to his post at the head of the War Department where Stimson directed the expansion of the Army to over 10,000,000 soldiers.

Ten days before the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Stimson entered in his diary the following statement: "how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves."

Under Truman's administration

Stimson was the supreme commander in the development of the atomic bomb, with direct supervision over General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project. Both Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman followed Stimson's advice on every aspect of the bomb, and Stimson overruled the military when needed (for example, by taking the cultural center Kyoto, where he had spent his honeymoon, off the target list ). On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bombing destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Stimson strongly opposed the Morgenthau Plan to de-industrialize and partition Germany into several smaller states. The plan also envisioned the deportation and summary imprisonment of anybody suspected of responsibility for Nazi war crimes. Initially, Roosevelt had been sympathetic to this plan, but later, against Stimson's opposition and due to the public outcry when the plan was leaked, the President backtracked. Stimson thus retained overall control of the U.S. occupation zone in Germany, and although the Morgenthau plan never became official policy, it did influence the early occupation. Explaining his opposition to the plan, Stimson insisted to Roosevelt that ten European countries, including Russia, depended upon Germany's export-import trade and production of raw materials and that it was inconceivable that this "gift of nature," populated by peoples of "energy, vigor, and progressiveness," should be turned into a "ghost territory" or "dust heap".

What Stimson most feared, however, was that too low a subsistence-level economy would turn the anger of the German people against the Allies and thereby "obscure the guilt of the Nazis and the viciousness of their doctrines and their acts". Stimson pressed similar arguments on President Harry S. Truman in the spring of 1945.

Stimson, a lawyer, insisted - against the initial wishes of both Roosevelt and Churchill - on proper judicial proceedings against leading war criminals. He and the United States Department of War drafted the first proposals for an International Tribunal, and this soon received backing from the incoming President Truman. Stimson's plan eventually led to the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46 that have had a significant impact on the development of International Law.

Stimson's Death and Memorials

Stimson lived until October 1950, becoming the last surviving member of the Taft Cabinet. He died at age 83 at his estate in Huntington, NY, on the north shore of Long Island. He is buried in the adjacent town of Cold Spring Harbor, in the cemetery of St. John's Church.

Stimson is remembered on Long Island with the Henry L. Stimson Middle School in Huntington Station and by a residential building on the campus of Stony Brook University. The Henry L. Stimson Center, a private research institute in Washington, DC, advocates what it says is Stimson's "practical, non-partisan approach" to international relations. The Benjamin Franklin-class ballistic missile submarine USS Henry L. Stimson (SSBN-655) also was named for him.

See also

• List of U.S. political appointments that crossed party lines

References

• Larry G. Gerber. "Stimson, Henry Lewis"; http://www.anb.org/articles/06/06-00626.html; American National Biography Online February 2000.
• Larry G. Gerber, The Limits of Liberalism: Josephus Daniels, Henry Stimson, Bernard Baruch, Donald Richberg, Felix Frankfurter and the Development of the Modern American Political Economy (1983).
• Godfrey Hodgson, The Colonel: The Life and Wars of Henry Stimson, 1867-1950 (1990).
• Elting E. Morison, Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson (1960).
• David F. Schmitz. Henry L. Stimson: The First Wise Man (2000)

Primary sources

• Stimson, Henry and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War. (1948), his memoirs

External links

• Obituary, New York Times, October 21, 1950
• Henry Stimson Center
• Hiroshima: diary excerpts
• Annotated bibliography for Henry Stimson from the Alsos Digital LIbrary
• Sherman Genealogy Including Families of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, England By Thomas Townsend Sherman

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