Background
Jefferson Caffery was born on December 1, 1886; the son of Charles Duval Caffery, a well-to-do lawyer who was elected to three terms as mayor of Lafayette, and Mary Catherine Parkerson. He grew up on the "mansion block" of the city.
Jefferson Caffery was born on December 1, 1886; the son of Charles Duval Caffery, a well-to-do lawyer who was elected to three terms as mayor of Lafayette, and Mary Catherine Parkerson. He grew up on the "mansion block" of the city.
"Jeff, " as he was known to the family, attended a small private school and read voraciously in his father's library. Riding horseback was his principal recreation, for he was something of a loner. Enrolled in the local "industrial institute" at the age of fourteen, Jefferson transferred to Tulane University a year later. After graduating with a B. A. in 1906, he read law with his father for three years and was admitted to the bar.
Returning from a trip to England in the summer of 1908 Caffery determined to be a professional diplomat and travel all over the world. Although admission to the diplomatic service was by examination, traces of the old spoils system lingered. The hurdle facing a college graduate was not so much the examination as the designation to take it. On the recommendation of a senator and two congressmen from Louisiana, Secretary of State Philander Knox designated Caffery to take the examination. After passing the test in January 1911, Caffery became secretary of the American legation at Caracas, Venezuela. For the next eight years Caffery served as secretary of legation or embassy at a series of posts in Venezuela, Sweden, Persia, and France. From 1920 to 1925 he was second in command or acting chief of mission in Madrid, Athens, and Tokyo. In Athens he had to administer relief to Greek refugees from Turkey. In Tokyo he was responsible for American aid to the victims of the great earthquake of 1923. Philanthropy of this sort characterized the American engagement in European and Asian affairs in the isolationist period following World War I. The situation in Latin America, where Caffery was posted from 1926 to 1944, was different. There isolationism did not apply and United States diplomats did not cease to be activists. Caffery, who defined diplomacy as "getting things done, " was particularly adept at finding accommodation with local leaders.
Caffery was promoted to be minister to El Salvador in 1926. Some of his contemporaries refused these promotions because they entailed a loss of tenure under the Rogers Act. Caffery, however, welcomed the opportunity and endured as chief of mission, either minister or ambassador, for the next twenty-nine years, a record in American history, as President Eisenhower pointed out on Caffery's retirement in 1955. In El Salvador, Caffery recalled, he "did not have enough work to do. " His subsequent assignments to Colombia, Cuba, and Brazil were more challenging. In Colombia he obtained the restoration of the Barco concession to the Gulf Oil Company by helping the president collect a loan from banks in New York and Boston. In Cuba Caffery contrived the overthrow of a revolutionary president opposed to the United States by winning over the leader of the Cuban army. As ambassador to Brazil from July 1937 to September 1944, Caffery fostered the paradoxical partnership between the Brazilian dictator, Getulio Vargas, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; he helped arrange an encounter between the two presidents aboard a United States destroyer at Natal, Brazil, on January 28, 1943. In March of the previous year Brazil had still been technically neutral. Caffery had nonetheless been able to persuade Vargas to allow the United States to use an air corridor along Brazil's northeast coast for flights to Africa. Airborne supplies thus reached British forces in Egypt in time to help turn back the German thrust from Tripoli. Vargas, who seized power by a coup on November 10, 1937, was expected to align himself with the Axis. Caffery deterred him from this course by threatening to restrict American imports of Brazilian coffee.
From November 1944 to May 1949, Caffery served as ambassador to France, a post usually filled by a political appointee. In the political and economic shambles of World War II, however, a trouble-shooter was needed. In Paris, Caffery gained recognition as a "diplomat's diplomat, " a title given him in the citation accompanying the Foreign Service Cup he received in 1971. A manual for diplomats published in 1948 described the Paris embassy under Caffery as the "showcase of American diplomacy. " During Caffery's assignment to Paris, the principal objective of American foreign policy was to prevent a Communist takeover of the western European democracies by promoting their economic recovery. The focus of Franco-American relations consequently was on aid programs. Caffery's contribution consisted principally in publicizing American aid and in combating Communism within the French government and in the labor unions. In so doing he enlarged the traditional role of the embassy. The "diplomat's diplomat" was anticipating the missions of the USIS and CIA.
His career had reached a pinnacle.
In Egypt from 1949 to 1955, Caffery reverted to classical diplomacy, mediating between the British and the Egyptians in their protracted negotiations under a treaty that allowed a British garrison to occupy the Suez Canal zone in peacetime. Unwilling to evacuate the zone unconditionally, the British were seeking somehow to internationalize their presence in Egypt. To the dismay of both Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden, Caffery refused to sit in on the negotiations as their ally. Preserving American evenhandedness, he helped shape the compromises that both sides accepted in October 1954. The British agreed to withdraw their troops within twenty months on condition that they might return if Turkey or an Arab nation were attacked by an "outside" power during the next seven years. Caffery's mission to Egypt ended with the signing of the agreement. In order to arrive at this settlement, Eisenhower had permitted Caffery to extend his term as ambassador three years beyond the statutory retirement age of sixty-five. Egypt had, in the meantime, undergone a revolution. In July 1952, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser replaced King Farouk as head of the government. While carefully refraining from any offer of American intervention, Caffery had stood by the king until his departure into exile. Impressed by this display of trustworthiness, Nasser reached out to the embassy. Prospects of drawing Egypt into alignment with the West looked bright for a while. They faded, however, when it became obvious that Nasser wanted arms without conditions. As Caffery later explained to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "we had conditions. " Because the Soviet Union was willing to supply weapons to a country at war with Israel, Nasser turned his back on the West. It was left to Secretary of State Kissinger some twenty years later to restore U. S. -Egyptian relations to the degree of cordiality existing in Caffery's time. Departing Cairo in January 1955, the Cafferys lived in retirement mostly in Rome until they returned to Lafayette in 1973. Caffery died in Lafayette the following year.
During Caffery's assignment to Paris, the principal objective of American foreign policy was to prevent a Communist takeover of the western European democracies by promoting their economic recovery.
Caffery's contribution consisted principally in publicizing American aid and in combating Communism within the French government and in the labor unions.
He developed a pragmatic and aggressive style, that was largely devoid of political idealism.
In 1937 Caffery was married to Gertrude McCarthy, an heiress from Chicago eight years younger than he. The marriage, which remained childless, lasted thirty-six years until Mrs. Caffery's death. More gregarious and communicative than her husband, Mrs. Caffery provided the means and the management necessary for entertainment on the grand scale.