Hay, John Milton

HAY, JOHN MILTON

John Milton Hay (1838–1905) was born on October 8, 1838, in Salem, Indiana, and raised on a small town on the Mississippi River. He graduated from Brown University and decided to enter law. In 1858 Hay was studying law at his uncle's law firm in Springfield, Illinois, when he made friends with an interesting neighbor, Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). Already a Republican, Hay became an assistant private secretary to Lincoln and followed the president-elect to Washington, DC. Hay served with Lincoln until the president's assassination in 1865.

Hay was then appointed secretary to the legation in Paris in March 1865; he moved on to Vienna in 1867, then finishing this tour of duty from 1868 to 1870 in Madrid. Returning to the United States in 1870, Hay took a position on the editorial board of the New York Tribune. In 1871 he published a book of poems, Pike County Ballads and Other Pieces. Soon afterward he published a travel book based upon his days in Spain, Castilian Days. In 1875 Hays moved to Cleveland, Ohio, until President Rutherford B. Hayes (1877–1881) appointed him Assistant Secretary of State, an office he held from 1879 to 1881. In 1881 Hay returned to the New York Tribune as editor. For the next 15 years he worked at the Tribune while concurrently traveling and writing.

John Hay anonymously published an anti-labor novel, Bread-Winners in 1884, and his most famous published work, Abraham Lincoln: A History, in 1890. Written in collaboration with John G. Nicolay (1832–1901), the ten volume Abraham Lincoln was the standard biography on the famous president for many decades. Hay continued to write, but his career took another turn to public service in 1897 when President William McKinley (1897–1901) appointed Hay as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain.

Hay arrived at the Court of St. James sharing expansionist views that were held by another important politician, Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). Like Roosevelt, Hay supported the American entry into the Spanish-American War in 1898. After initially believing the Philippines should not be completely annexed by the United States, he shifted his position to support the full annexation of the islands as a means of balancing the political power in Asia with that of Japan and Russia.

President McKinley appointed John Hay to serve as Secretary of State in 1898, a position Hay maintained when McKinley was assassinated and Theodore Roosevelt became president (1901–1909). He held this position until his death. Hay presided over two extremely important episodes in the history of the United States: the Open Door policy with China and the Panama Canal Treaty. In 1899 and 1900, Hay issued two "open door" notes that called for all foreign powers to respect the territorial rights of China. His goal was to encourage free trade in China without that country being partitioned by European or other powers. The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 presented just such an opportunity to these powers, but Hay's influence was able to keep China open.

Hay was also a firm advocate of a canal that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There were several plans afoot at the time for an inter-oceanic canal in either the Isthmus of Panama or in Nicaragua. Hay negotiated a treaty with Columbia in January 1903 to pay $10 million and an annual rental of $250,000 for a ninety-nine year lease on property in Panama. Columbia initially rejected the offer, but in November 1903 Panama, assisted by machinations by Roosevelt and Hay, successfully rose up against Columbia and established itself as a sovereign nation. Hay then signed a treaty with the new Panamanian minister similar to the one made with Columbia.

John Hay was an excellent writer and a cultured man. He preferred the more erudite social scene of the East to the midwestern frontiers of his youth. In 1904 he fell ill, and he died in Newbury, New Hampshire, on July 1, 1905.

See also: Open Door Policy, Panama Canal Treaty

FURTHER READING

Dennett, Tyler. John Hay: From Poetry to Politics. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1933.

Encyclopedia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1994, s.v. "Hay, John."

Garraty, John A. and Jerome L. Sternstein. Encyclopedia of American Biography. New York: HarperCollins, 1996, s.v. "Hay, John."

Hay, John. Edited by Tyler Dennett. Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1939.

Van Doren, Charles, ed. Webster's American Biographies. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster Inc., 1984, s.v. "Hay, John."