Elihu Benjamin Washburne (1816–1887) was born in Livermore, Maine. He attended Harvard Law School and settled in Galena, Ohio, where he practiced law. As a friend of President Ulysses S. Grant, he accepted the position of secretary of state as a temporary measure, until he could be appointed minister to France, two weeks later. His tenure as secretary of state was the shortest.

Washburne arrived in Paris shortly before the Franco-Prussian War broke out. He was there when France was defeated and the people of Paris rebelled against the French government to establish the Paris Commune, a short-lived government between March and May in 1871. More than 20,000 were killed in the turmoil. While other diplomats left Paris, Washburne remained behind to help American citizens, even visiting imprisoned Americans and identifying their bodies. Following the collapse of the Commune, Washburne continued to serve as U.S. minister to France until 1877.

After his service, Washburne returned to Galena and supported Grant’s bid for a third term as president at the Republican Convention that eventually nominated James A. Garfield.

Hamilton Fish (1808–1893) was born in New York. He graduated from Columbia University, became a lawyer, and entered politics. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives, as governor of New York, and then in the U.S. Senate. President Ulysses S. Grant nominated Fish to be secretary of state. 

As secretary, Fish successfully resolved claims related to the British-built Confederate warship Alabama when an international arbitration tribunal awarded the United States $15.5 million, against $2 million in damages paid by the United States for illegal Union blockade practices. Like some of his predecessors, Fish sought new territories for the United States, trying, unsuccessfully, to acquire a part of the Dominican Republic and lands controlled by Hudson’s Bay Company, which the British government instead sold to Canada in 1870. Fish maintained U.S. interest in Cuba, pressuring Spanish officials to consider granting Cuba independence following a revolt against Spanish rule in 1868. He also pushed for an end to slavery on the island, but Spain did not respond. Raids along the Mexican border were a problem that would escalate under his successor.

At the end of the Grant administration, Fish returned to his law practice in New York.

Ground was broken for the south wing of the new building on June 21, 1871, and in the latter part of June 1875, the Department of State began moving in. Construction of the building, designed by architect Alfred Mullet, apparently took longer than expected. Mullet told Secretary Hamilton Fish that the building could be completed in 1881. In fact, it took seven years longer, altogether 17 years, from 1871 to 1888, before the entire building was ready for occupancy.²

Covering more than 5 acres on a lot west of the White House, near where the first State, War, and Navy Building had stood, the new building “was reputed to be the largest and finest office building in the world.” It cost more than $10 million.³ The south wing of the building had been planned for the exclusive use of the Department of State, but with their own increasing need for space, the War and Navy Departments moved into the south wing in 1882, reducing the space available to the Department of State by about 40 percent.⁴ 

Notes 

1. MS. Department of State, Accounts Records, New Department, Ledger, 1871–1883, p. 116.
2. Executive Office Building, op. cit., p. 48.
3. Ibid., pp. 49–53.
4. MS. Department of State, 5 Reports of Bureau Officers, above cited memorandum of James Fenner Lee, annex B; See Senate Document No. 155, 65th Cong., 2d Sess. (serial 7315), pp. 80–84.

Images

1. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “State, War and Navy Building, Washington.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed July 31, 2020. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-115a-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
2. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “The New State Department.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed July 31, 2020. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-4a9d-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

William Maxwell Evarts (1818–1901) was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale College, studied at Harvard Law School, and practiced law in New York City, earning a reputation as one of the country’s top lawyers. During the Civil War, Evarts was dispatched on missions to Great Britain and France, to help prevent recognition of the Confederacy and the construction of Confederate warships. After the war he helped arbitrate the Alabama claims, made against Great Britain for the Confederate warship built there. President Andrew Johnson retained Evarts as his counsel during the impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. After Johnson was acquitted, he appointed Evarts attorney general. A decade later, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Evarts secretary of state.

As secretary, Evarts grappled with the decision of whether to recognize the new Mexican government led by Porfirio Díaz. Breaking with tradition, he placed several conditions on recognition, in particular the right of U.S. troops to cross the Mexican border in pursuit of raiders. When Díaz’s government condemned the conditions, Evarts extended recognition. But the increasing U.S. interest in Latin America can also be seen in Evarts’s attempt to negotiate peace among Chile, Peru, and Bolivia during the War of the Pacific.

Despite the Burlingame-Seward Treaty’s easing of restrictions on Chinese immigration, anti-immigration forces on the West Coast increased their demands and in 1880 Evarts sent a committee to China to negotiate new limits. Two years later Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act that ended Chinese immigration and stated that Chinese immigrants were not eligible for citizenship.

James Gillespie Blaine (1830–1893) was born in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Washington College (now Washington and Jefferson) and moved to Maine, where he worked as a teacher and newspaper editor. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served as Speaker. He subsequently represented Maine in the U.S. Senate. President James A. Garfield appointed Blaine as secretary of state. 

As secretary in the brief Garfield administration, Blaine advocated commercial expansion and increased naval power. He also encouraged peaceful relations within the Americas and, like his predecessor, tried to negotiate peace in the War of the Pacific. He also attempted to arbitrate a border dispute between Mexico and Guatemala. Blaine’s diplomatic work in the planning of a Pan-American Conference was cut short in September 1881, when President Garfield died after being shot by an assassin. Blaine remained in office until Chester Arthur, the new president, selected a replacement for him.

Blaine lost his bid for president in 1884 but was named secretary of state again in 1889, when Benjamin Harrison began his term as president. 

Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen (1817–1885) was born at Millstone, New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers University. A lawyer by training, he served as New Jersey attorney general and in 1866 was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he represented his state for almost a decade. He worked in a private law practice until he was appointed secretary of state by President Chester Arthur. 

As secretary, Frelinghuysen inherited a number of diplomatic issues related to the expansion of U.S. power. While he mediated a peaceful settlement to the War of the Pacific among Chile, Bolivia, and Peru, he withdrew from further actions in Latin America, concerned that the United States was not viewed favorably. He canceled the Pan-American Conference that his predecessor had planned and refused to arbitrate a dispute between Venezuela and Britain over Guyana’s western border in South America. Nevertheless, despite the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, he tried to secure for the United States exclusive rights to construct and control a canal between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, but the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the treaty. In 1844, when German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck called a conference in Berlin to mediate the European scramble for colonies in Africa, Frelinghuysen declined to participate but sent observers, who accepted the conclusions of the conference. Frelinghuysen also secured a trade treaty with Korea.

Frelinghuysen died shortly after the end of President Arthur’s term.

Thomas Francis Bayard (1828–1898) was born in Wilmington, Delaware. He studied law and practiced in Delaware. He represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate from 1869 to 1885, when President Grover Cleveland appointed him secretary of state.

As secretary, Bayard appointed diplomats known for their skill and expertise rather than their political loyalty. He attempted to settle disputes over fishing rights and the hunting of fur seals with Canada, Newfoundland, and Britain, but the issue would not be solved until 1903. With a focus on Pacific affairs, in 1887 Bayard oversaw the Senate’s ratification of the renewal of a reciprocity treaty with Hawaii. That same year he hosted a conference to de-escalate tensions among Germany, Great Britain, and the United States over Samoa. In 1889 Bayard signed an agreement with Japan that provided for the gradual abolition of special protections for American traders living in Japan. Despite the recent U.S. treaty with Korea, Bayard declined to interfere with British occupation of islands off that nation’s coast.

After his tenure as secretary of state, Bayard served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom until 1897.

When James Gillespie Blaine became secretary of state for a second time, appointed by President Benjamin Harrison, he oversaw the Pan-American Conference that he had envisioned during his first term. The conference addressed trade, communication, and legal issues, and eventually led to the establishment of the Pan-American Union. He also continued to try to diffuse tensions with Germany and the United Kingdom over Samoa and to negotiate fur seal hunting rights in the Bering Sea. 

Blaine’s resignation in 1892 caught everyone, including President Harrison, by surprise, and  he died not long afterward.

John Watson Foster (1836–1917) was born in Pike County, Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University and attended Harvard Law School. He practiced law until he joined the U.S. Army during the Civil War, rising to the rank of colonel. He worked to build support for the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872 and was named by Grant as minister to Mexico. There he sought to secure U.S. recognition of the government of Porfirio Díaz and to resolve border issues. Foster subsequently served as minister to Russia, where he advocated for the rights of Jewish U.S. citizens living there, and as minister to Spain, where he tried to secure trade agreements for the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico. In 1892 President Benjamin Harrison named Foster secretary of state.

As secretary, Foster was involved in negotiations for trade agreements with nations in Latin America. He attempted to counter the expansion of British imperialism in the region and to negotiate a 99-year lease for a naval base in the Dominican Republic. His efforts to annex the Kingdom of Hawaii were unsuccessful.

After leaving office Foster represented the United States in arbitration of seal-hunting rights in the Bering Sea. At the time of his death, in 1917, his son-in-law Robert Lansing was secretary of state. His grandson, John Foster Dulles, would be secretary of state later in the 20th century.

Walter Quintin Gresham (1832–1895) was born in Harrison County, Indiana. He attended Indiana University and studied law. He served in the state legislature, then in the Union Army during the Civil War, rising to the rank of brevet major general. After the war he was a district judge in Indiana until appointed postmaster general and then secretary of the treasury by President Chester A. Arthur. Although Gresham ran in the Republican Party presidential primaries in 1884 and 1888, he grew dissatisfied with the party’s direction, and he accepted the invitation of President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, to be secretary of state, an offer Cleveland made as a bipartisan gesture. 

As secretary, Gresham opened an investigation into the failed U.S. attempt to annex Hawaii and uncovered the direct involvement of U.S. diplomats in the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani, whose reign pro-American sugar planters wished to end. Although President Cleveland hoped to restore Native Hawaiian political power, the U.S. Senate declined. Gresham also worked to counter British influence in the Americas, especially during an 1895 royalist Brazilian coup attempt, but he also coordinated with Britain to protect commercial trade in an area that is now Nicaragua. The U.S. policy of nonintervention in European affairs was challenged by the treatment of U.S. citizens by the Ottoman Empire but Gresham rejected calls by missionaries for a U.S. naval base in Smyrna.

Gresham’s tenure as secretary of state was cut short by his death in 1895.

Richard Olney (1835–1917) was born in Oxford, Massachusetts. He graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School, serving in the Massachusetts legislature before being appointed attorney general by President Grover Cleveland. Following the death of Walter Gresham, Olney was named secretary of state. 

Olney came to office at a tense time. The Cuban War of Independence against Spanish colonial rule was gaining strength. The U.S. government tried to halt shipments by Cuban sympathizers and exiles from Key West and other U.S. ports but also faced public pressure to intervene on behalf of the rebels. Tensions over Cuba would eventually ignite the Spanish-American War the year after Olney left office in 1897. Elsewhere in Latin America Olney played a significant role in arranging for an arbitrated settlement to the boundary dispute between Venezuela and the British colony of Guyana, thus enhancing the role of the United States as a power player in the Western Hemisphere. 

Olney left office at the end of Cleveland’s second administration and resumed his law practice. He continued to write about international relations. 

John Sherman (1823–1900) was born in Lancaster, Ohio, a brother of the well-known Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman. He studied law and entered politics, being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and to the U.S. Senate, where he served from 1860 to 1877. President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Sherman secretary of treasury, and during his tenure he helped author the Sherman Antitrust Act before returning to the Senate to serve another 16 years. While in the Senate, Sherman ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination three times. In 1897, President William McKinley selected Sherman to serve as his secretary of state.

Sherman’s tenure as secretary was marked by the tension with Assistant Secretary of State William R. Day, who, with the support of President McKinley, often replaced Sherman at cabinet meetings. Sherman was influential in matters of international commerce, but Assistant Secretary Day was the one who negotiated the annexation of Hawaiian Islands and managed U.S. policy toward Spain over the question of Cuban independence. War broke out with Spain in 1898, and Sherman resigned in protest four days later.

Though his health was failing, Sherman continued to comment on political matters and opposed the acquisition of Puerto Rico and the Philippines that came with the treaty ending the war.

William Rufus Day (1849–1923) was born in Ravenna, Ohio. He graduated from the University of Michigan and began a law practice in Canton, Ohio, where he became friends with another lawyer, the future president William McKinley. Following his election, President McKinley chose Day to serve as assistant secretary of state, and in this position he took over the duties of the increasingly alienated secretary, John Sherman. When Sherman resigned, Day succeeded him as secretary.

Congress had just declared war against Spain following the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, but the explosion, which was later understood as an accident, was not the only reason for war. The U.S. public had long been stirred to sympathy with the rebels in the Cuban independence movement, and U.S. businesses sought to protect their interests in Cuba. The conflict, which lasted four months, ended in a decisive U.S. victory. Day vacated his position to lead the peace commission in Paris. By its terms, Spain ceded its colonies of Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico to the United States for $20 million. Cuba was guaranteed its independence. During the war, in July 1898, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution annexing Hawaii. Within a year the U.S. had become an imperial power, with overseas possessions for the first time. 

Shortly thereafter President McKinley appointed Day to the U.S. court of appeals. In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served for two decades.

John Milton Hay (1838–1905) was born in Salem, Indiana, and his family later moved to Illinois. He attended Illinois State College and Brown University and then read law in his uncle’s office, in Springfield. After helping in Abraham Lincoln’s campaign for the presidency, Lincoln asked Hay to be one of his private secretaries. Hay’s 10-volume study of Lincoln, written with the other private secretary, John Nicolay, is a classic. Following the Civil War, Hay served at diplomatic posts in Paris, Vienna, and Madrid. President William McKinley appointed him ambassador to Great Britain and then, in 1898, secretary of state. 

With possessions in the Pacific—the Philippines and Hawaii—Hay amplified U.S. interests in the region. When the United States joined an international effort to suppress the anti-foreigner Boxer Rebellion, Hay promoted an “Open Door” policy that protected China’s integrity while assuring equal access to China by all its trading partners. Hay also secured the settlement of the Alaska-Canada boundary controversy. When President McKinley was assassinated, Hay stayed on as secretary of state to serve under President Theodore Roosevelt. Although the new president wielded greater influence over foreign policy than had his predecessor, Hay helped secure, by a 1903 treaty, the right for the United States to construct and defend the Panama Canal. 

Hay died in office in 1905.

Elihu Root (1845–1937) was born in Clinton, New York. He studied at Hamilton College, where his father was a professor of mathematics, and then at New York University School of Law. Root practiced in New York, excelling in his career as a lawyer and becoming increasingly active in the Republican Party. In 1899, President William McKinley asked him to serve as secretary of war, a position he held until 1905, when President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him secretary of state. 

Root’s first notable act as secretary was a goodwill tour through Latin America, where he sought to ease tensions over U.S. influence in the region, particularly in light of the Spanish-American War. In addition,the U.S. also supported a revolt in Panama, so that the United States could secure the right to build the Panama Canal, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Root supported arbitration as a means for resolving international disputes and in 1912 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to international peace, including the negotiation of arbitration treaties with 24 nations. Internally, Root instituted the first Foreign Service Exam to help professionalize the Foreign Service and Consular Service and achieved other reforms that had a long-reaching impact on the Department of State. 

In January 1909 Root resigned his position to join the U.S. Senate, where he served until 1915. He was also president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and founding chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, established in 1918. In 1922 he served on the delegation to the Washington Naval Conference that achieved a reduction of naval forces by five nations, the world first disarmament agreement.

Robert Bacon (1860–1919) was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard University, where he befriended future president Theodore Roosevelt. He was a banker and businessman before Roosevelt named him assistant secretary of state in 1905, and in 1909 he served briefly as secretary of state during the last months of Roosevelt’s term.

As secretary, Bacon worked diligently to ratify treaties between Colombia, Panama, and the United States regarding the Panama Canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He also convened an environmental conference that addressed the conservation of natural resources in North America.

Bacon served as ambassador to France from 1909 to 1912. During World War I he joined the staff of General John J. Pershing.

Philander Chase Knox (1853–1921) was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Mount Union College in Ohio, studied law, and rose to prominence as a corporate attorney. In 1901, President William McKinley appointed him attorney general, and he continued in this position during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt. Knox represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate from 1904 to 1909, when he was appointed secretary of state by President William Howard Taft. 

As secretary, Knox encouraged and protected U.S. investments abroad, practicing “Dollar Diplomacy,” as it was called, in using trade to promote democracy and stability in Asia and Latin America. He successfully negotiated an end to the Bering Sea controversy over the hunting of fur seals in a treaty signed by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia in 1911. It was the first international treaty for wildlife conservation. Within the Department of State, Knox established regional divisions and extended the merit system for selection and promotion in the Consular and Diplomatic Service. 

After President Taft lost his second presidential bid in 1912, Knox resigned his position and returned to Pittsburgh. He continued to practice law until he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1916, where he served until his death in 1921.

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) was born in Salem, Illinois. He graduated from Illinois College and Union College of Law (now Northwestern University) and practiced law in Illinois prior to moving to Lincoln, Nebraska. Bryan won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1890 and served two terms, promoting Populist causes such as the free coinage of silver, national income tax, and direct election of senators. He returned to Nebraska and edited the Omaha World-Herald. In the 1896 presidential race, Bryan secured both the Populist Party and the Democratic Party nomination but lost the election to the Republican candidate, William McKinley. It was at the Democratic National Convention that he delivered his famous “Cross of Gold” speech, attacking East Coast monied interests. The Democratic Party nominated Bryan again as its candidate for president in 1900 and 1908, but he lost both elections. Following the 1912 election, President Woodrow Wilson selected Bryan as his secretary of state.

Bryan’s major accomplishment as secretary was his negotiation of peace treaties that pledged the 30 signatories to refrain from hostilities during arbitration of disputes. He also negotiated the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty in 1914 (ratified in 1916) that permitted the United States to construct a canal across Nicaragua and secured rights to build naval bases in the region. Following the outbreak of World War I, Bryan hoped to negotiate a peace settlement but his position on the rights of neutrals placed him at odds with President Wilson, who did not at first recognize that submarine warfare—especially the German practice of attacking without warning—would make it impossible to protect U.S. citizens traveling in a war zone. When a German submarine sank the British passenger liner Lusitania in May 1915, killing 128 U.S. citizens, Wilson sent a strongly worded protest to the German government. But his refusal to warn Americans not to travel on British ships caused Bryan to resign.

Following his resignation, Bryan remained active in politics, advocating for the eight-hour day, minimum wage, women’s suffrage, and Prohibition. Famously, in 1925 he defended the Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution in the trial of John Scopes. Scopes was convicted under the law, and Bryan died suddenly, five days later.