LANSING, ROBERT 1864-1928
Secretary of state, 1915-1920
Wartime Cabinet Member
As secretary of state during World War I, Robert Lansing was over-shadowed by President Woodrow Wilson, who conducted most important foreign-policy matters himself. As the German ambassador to the United States once commented, "Since Wilson decides everything, any interview with Lansing is a mere matter of form."
Background
Born in Watertown, New York, on 17 October 1864, Robert Lansing graduated from Amherst College in 1886. After studying law in his father's law office, he was admitted to the New York State bar in 1889 and became a junior partner in his father's firm in Watertown. In 1890 Lansing married Eleanor Foster, whose father became secretary of state for President Benjamin Harrison in 1892. Reaping the benefits of nepotism, Lansing was appointed associate counsel for the United States in international arbitration and served as counsel on many international arbitration cases over the next sixteen years. In 1907 he became a founding editor of the American Journal of International Law. During the opening months of World War I, Lansing worked as a lawyer in the Department of State, serving as acting secretary during Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan's frequent absences from Washington. When Bryan unexpectedly resigned in June 1915 during the Lusitania crisis, President Wilson appointed Lansing to the post.
In Wilson's Shadow
Unlike Bryan, who brought to his cabinet position considerable political skills and influence gained as a three-time nominee for the presidency, Lansing, as a career lawyer and diplomat, lacked an independent political base. President Wilson determined all important matters of state. He sent personal notes to foreign powers, conducted informal negotiations via his friend Edward M, House, and at the end of the war in 1918 personally traveled to Europe to conclude the peace. During his tenure in office, Secretary of State Lansing was often relegated to a secondary role in U.S. foreign policy. In November 1917 Lansing and Viscount Ishii Kikujiro of Japan concluded the Lansing-Ishii Agreement, in which the United States recognized Japanese interests in China, while reaffirming the Open Door policy. During the war Lansing handled protests to the British government over its blacklisting of some U.S. firms, its censorship of U.S. overseas mail, and other issues relating to the British blockade. But the important negotiations with Germany over the sinking of the Lusitania and issues of unrestricted submarine warfare were handled by Wilson. Lansing was the official head of the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, but it was soon clear to everyone that his position was only nominal—President Wilson himself was running the American negotiations.
Controversy
Lansing lost Wilson's confidence because he did not view the Covenant of the League of Nations as crucial to the peace treaty. Senators who opposed the treaty used Lansing's opposition to the League of Nations as part of their successful strategy to defeat its ratification. After Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke, Lansing called several meetings of the cabinet to conduct routine business, and Wilson used Lansing's calling of these meetings as a pretext to call for his resignation. On 12 February 1920 Lansing complied with the president's request. Lansing continued the practice of international law in Washington, D.C., until his death on 30 October 1928, and he wrote three books about his experiences as secretary of state, among them The Big Four and Others of the Peace Conference (1921).
Sources:
Thomas H. Hartig, Robert Lansing: an Interpretive Biography (New York: Arno, 1982);
Robert Lansing, War Memoirs of Robert Lansing, Secretary of State (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1935);
Daniel Malloy Smith, Robert Lansing and American Neutrality, 1914-1917, University of California Publications in History, volume 59 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954),
