Stimson, Henry L.

Stimson, Henry L. (1867–1950), lawyer, secretary of state, secretary of war.The grandson of a New York stockbroker and son of a doctor, Stimson was educated at Phillips Andover Academy, Yale College, and the Harvard Law School. He practiced law in New York as a partner of Elihu Root, later, like him, secretary of both war and state.

Stimson's long career spanned the entire history of modern American warfare, from Indian fighting to the atomic bomb. As an undergraduate, he saw Indian warfare in Colorado. As secretary of war in the Taft administration, he visited the army posts of the Old West in the last years of their existence. He saw active service in France during World War I as an artillery officer with the American Expeditionary Forces.

In early 1902, while riding in Washington, Stimson was spotted by President Theodore Roosevelt, who jokingly ordered him to swim Rock Creek. Stimson took the order literally and nearly drowned as he forded the creek. Within a year, Teddy Roosevelt, who liked that kind of man, tapped Stimson as U.S. Attorney in New York, where he made a great record as a prosecutor.

Appointed secretary of war by President Taft, Stimson helped to modernize the army's structure, ending the isolation of the privileged staff corps. His reforms infuriated conservatives, led by the adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, who called Stimson and his supporters, in writing, “incompetent amateurs.” After consulting Root, who said when a man pulls your nose you must hit him, Stimson fired Ainsworth for gross insubordination.

Stimson ran unsuccessfully for governor of New York in 1910; then, after the war, practiced law in New York until he was asked by Coolidge to impose a settlement in Nicaragua and in 1927 to serve as governor general of the Philippines. As Herbert C. Hoover's secretary of state, he was involved in the London Naval Conference of 1930 and in the 1931–32 Manchuria crisis, in which he formulated the “Stimson Doctrine” of nonrecognition of conquered countries.

He was prominent among the internationalist Republicans who argued for American “preparedness” in the late 1930s. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him secretary of war. Stimson worked closely with Gen. George C. Marshall and assembled an able team of civilian advisers, including Robert C. Lovett and John J. McCloy. He helped to steer through the decision to give first priority to the war in Europe; he also presided over the Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bomb.

Although he chaired the meetings at which the decision to use the bomb was taken, after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stimson had second thoughts. At his last cabinet meeting in September 1945 he argued that the United States should enter into an agreement with the Soviet Union to control the use of nuclear weapons.
[See also Nicaragua, U.S. Military Involvement in; Philippines, U.S. Military Involvement in; World War II: Domestic Course.]

Bibliography

Henry L. Stimson and and McGeorge Bundy , On Active Service in Peace and War, 1948.
Elting E. Morison , Turmoil and Tradition, 1960.
Godfrey Hodgson , The Colonel: The Life and Wars of Henry L. Stimson, 1990.

Godfrey Hodgson